


Bulletproof

by coffeeinallcaps



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Nogitsune Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1771711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeinallcaps/pseuds/coffeeinallcaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what most of his days look like, after:<br/>Stiles wakes up. He counts his fingers, tries to catch his breath as he waits for his heartbeat to slow down and the sweat on his skin to cool. He showers. Some mornings he eats with his dad; some mornings Scott comes over for breakfast. Some days he goes to school and some days he doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bulletproof

This is what most of his days look like, after:

Stiles wakes up. He counts his fingers, tries to catch his breath as he waits for his heartbeat to slow down and the sweat on his skin to cool. He showers. Some mornings he eats with his dad; some mornings Scott comes over for breakfast. Some days he goes to school and some days he doesn’t.

Once a week there’s therapy. Twice a week his dad takes him to the shooting range and teaches him how to fire a gun. Stiles hates how much he loves the weight of it in his hands, the violence of the recoil. Some evenings he puts his fingertips to his tongue and he hates the way the taste of metal calms him down.

Two months pass. Two months pass and Allison is still dead and Isaac still hasn’t come back home and Derek is still missing and Stiles still can’t sleep with the lights off, much less his bedroom door unlocked or the window cracked.

All things considered, he’s doing pretty well.

 

* * *

 

Allison stays dead and Isaac doesn’t come back home. They find Derek in Mexico, of all places. They wheedle money out of Peter and Scott’s dad and fly over there. Lydia and Kira come along and Melissa and his dad insist on joining and it feels, absurdly, like a family trip, a short vacation. A weekend getaway. Melissa reaches across the aisle to touch the back of his hand and next to her Scott is looking out of the little plastic window, and Stiles wishes he didn’t know what Scott was thinking but he does.

Derek is weak but unhurt. He sleeps through the entire plane ride back, head tilted to the side, mouth slack. He’s lost some more of his bulk. His facial hair is starting to creep into caveman territory. Stiles hasn’t slept in two days and he feels jittery, weightless. He watches Derek’s eyelids twitch and his chest rise and fall. There’s something about him, about his full beard and his slimmed-down figure and the dark smudges under his eyes. He looks robust. Real. Like if Stiles closed his eyes and opened them again, Derek would still be there.

Stiles doesn’t close his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes his dad forgets to lock his bedroom door from the outside and Stiles wakes up somewhere else. Someplace harmless, usually. The pantry. The basement. They keep the keys to his jeep with his dad’s guns, under lock and key, but one night Stiles wakes up behind the wheel of the cruiser in the driveway. It takes him half an hour to calm down enough to walk back to the house.

Then one night he wakes up in the cemetery. His feet sting and tiny drops of blood keep welling up on his fingers and palms. He doesn’t understand. There are fresh roses on his mother’s grave and black hands of steel and smoke curling around his lungs, hissing words. Riddles.

When he opens his eyes again his throat is burning and Deputy Parrish is looking at him, shaking him back and forth, mouth moving. He’s taken to the station. His dad comes for him and it’s warm inside his dad’s office, safe underneath the blanket Parrish has cast over his shoulders, and his throat burns and his lungs ache and his feet sting and he’s warm and safe in his dad’s embrace and he feels raw and tired and he tells his dad, finally, he says, syllables stumbling under their own weight:

“I don’t think I can do this,”

and his dad inhales sharply and holds him closer.

 

* * *

 

He stays at home the next day. Scott texts him a stream-of-consciousness narrative of the school day and Kira and Lydia send him a series of selfies.

A little past noon, the doorbell rings. Stiles hobbles to the door. Derek Hale is standing on his porch, a yellow Lab sitting patiently by his side.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all.

“’Sup,” Stiles says, leaning against the doorframe to take the weight off his injured feet. “Found yourself a new pack?”

Derek says, “Ha, ha.”

He’s trimmed his beard. There are no more dark smudges under his eyes. He looks good. Great, even. There’s still that robust quality to him, that sense of realness. Stiles kind of wants to reach out and touch him.

“Your dad,” Derek says. “He called me.”

Stiles waits.

“Asked me for advice,” Derek says.

The dog is looking up at Stiles. He shows her – it looks like a her – his hand, palm upward, and she sniffs at his fingers. “Can’t believe I lived to see the day we went to Derek Hale for life hacks,” Stiles tells the dog, stroking her head. Her fur is impossibly soft.

Derek rolls his eyes and says, “I’ve lost people too, you know.”

There’s something about him, something about the relaxed slope of his shoulders and the guarded set of his jaw and the fact that it would be weird for Stiles to reach out and touch him that makes anger strike him like a lightning bolt.

“You don’t think I know that?” he hisses, voice a red hot wire at the back of his throat. “Don’t you think I know that Lydia lost her best friend, that Scott lost the love of his life, that you lost your entire fucking family, you don’t think I wake up feeling _guilty as hell_ about being the one who’s like this every single—”

“Rule number one,” Derek says, “don’t feel guilty.”

“Jesus Christ, Derek, it’s a good thing you brought that fucking dog because if—”

“C’mon,” Derek says to the dog, tugging gently on the leash. She follows him past Stiles, into the house. Stiles doesn’t say anything. Right now he’s not sure he can trust his body to move when he tells it to, so he doesn’t try. He feels trapped. His heart rate is accelerating.

Derek steps outside again. “So hit me.”

Stiles’ throat unlocks. “Don’t you fucking—”

“Hit me.”

“Derek, I—”

“Hit me.”

So he punches Derek, punches him once, twice, and it’s like he’s on the shooting range, arm muscles absorbing the recoil of the gun as he fires and fires and fires, over and over again, punches Derek in the chest, punches him in the face, punches him over and over again until all of a sudden his wrists are cramping up and his knuckles have split open and he’s gasping, gasping for air.

Derek steadies him with a hand on his shoulder. He says, “How do you feel?”

Stiles lets out a wet, breathless laugh.

 

* * *

 

Things get better after that.

 

* * *

 

The dog is called Daisy. She’s six years old and a retired service dog. Stiles wakes up with her weight on his chest and his hands buried in her coat and her wet nose pressed into the crook of his neck three nights in a row.

It’s only on the third night that he realizes, with a hopeful jolt, this means his dad won’t have to lock his bedroom door anymore.

 

* * *

 

There are thoughts he doesn’t, can’t, share with Scott or his dad. Ms. Morell isn’t a spectacularly helpful therapist, but it’s nice to talk to someone he isn’t too close to. Sometimes she tells him about psychological theories. Sometimes she asks questions.

When he tells her about Derek and Daisy, though, she just smiles mysteriously.

“Seriously, she drives me mad sometimes,” Stiles says to Derek on their walk with Daisy afterward, and Derek throws him a sideway glance that says _I thought you already were_. Stiles sucks in air through his teeth and says, “You are so insensitive, Jesus,” and shoves him. “I can’t believe we paid shitloads of money to get you back from that Mexican clan of hunters.”

“Yeah?” Derek says, unperturbed. “Got buyer’s remorse?”

“Oh my God, we didn’t _buy_ you,” Stiles says. “It was ransom money. That’s more, like, like posting bail. Also, it was mostly Peter’s money, so—”

“Stop talking,” Derek says, “and just accept that you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Stiles says, and he shoves him again, presses both hands flat against the warm hard planes of Derek’s chest because he can.

 

* * *

 

Four months pass.

Four months pass and Allison is still dead and Isaac still hasn’t come back home and Stiles still can’t sleep with the lights off, but he can sleep with his bedroom door unlocked and the window cracked now. He considers it a small victory. So does Scott, who takes him for milkshakes to celebrate.

 

* * *

 

Stiles wakes up.

There’s a sheen of sweat on his skin and his heart is racing. His chest heaves. He touches his left thumb. One. Index finger. Two. Middle finger, three. Ring finger, four. Pinky, five. Right thumb, six. Index finger, seven. Middle—

A hand closes around the last two fingers.

“Hey,” Derek whispers. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Stiles nods, exhales. He closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m also [on Tumblr](http://coffeeinallcaps.tumblr.com)!


End file.
